Hidden element chemistry in biology
New reporting surfaced on previously underappreciated chemistry of ore‑forming elements in biological systems, showing these elements can play roles beyond geology in cellular processes. Social coverage summarized the work as uncovering biochemistry links that change how researchers trace elemental cycles in organisms. The posts point to interdisciplinary studies at the intersection of geochemistry and molecular biology (x.com).
Cells use sulfur every day, and new work shows its heavier cousins selenium and tellurium can join the same chemistry in ways scientists could finally watch directly. (kyoto-u.ac.jp) Sulfur, selenium, and tellurium sit in the same column of the periodic table and are called chalcogens, a family geologists know for “ore-forming” minerals. Kyoto University researchers reported on March 24, 2026 that they built a way to track mixed chains of those atoms inside glutathione- and cystine-based molecules in water. (kyoto-u.ac.jp) The group inserted selenium or tellurium into oxidized glutathione-cystine molecules and read the products with hydrogen-detected selenium-77 and tellurium-125 nuclear magnetic resonance, a method that works like a molecular scanner for atom-to-atom connections. The paper appeared March 15, 2026 in *ACS Measurement Science Au* with DOI 10.1021/acsmeasuresciau.5c00193. (eurekalert.org) That matters because earlier studies often relied on mass spectrometry, which can tell researchers what atoms are present but not always which atoms are directly bonded in unstable molecules. Kyoto said the new measurements gave what corresponding author Kazuma Murakami called the first direct spectroscopic view of heterochalcogen bonds in redox systems. (kyoto-u.ac.jp) Redox chemistry is the cell’s charge-balancing traffic, with electrons moving from one molecule to another during stress, signaling, and energy use. Glutathione, one of the best-studied cellular antioxidants, depends on sulfur chemistry to help neutralize reactive molecules that can damage cells. (nature.com) The Kyoto team said the mixed sulfur-selenium-tellurium compounds they generated showed strong redox activity and were tested with radical scavengers, chemicals used to intercept highly reactive species. The university said those assays connect the new structures to pathways also linked to ferroptosis, a regulated form of cell death driven by lipid damage. (kyoto-u.ac.jp) Biologists have long treated sulfur as central and the heavier chalcogens as harder-to-place outliers, partly because the relevant molecules are short-lived. A 2022 analysis in *Life* argued that sulfur is a bridge between organic molecules such as amino acids and inorganic metal cofactors, and that element-by-element biology still reflects deep geochemical history. (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) That geochemical angle is not new: microbes are already known to reshape trace-element cycles in soils, sediments, and water through reactions such as methylation, demethylation, and mineral formation. What changes here is the level of detail, from seeing elements move through ecosystems to seeing unstable chalcogen bonds inside biomolecule-like systems. (frontiersin.org) (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) The next step is less about geology than bookkeeping inside cells: finding when real organisms build these mixed chalcogen chains, how long they last, and what proteins control them. If that map fills in, ore-forming elements will look less like geological extras and more like occasional working parts of biochemistry. (kyoto-u.ac.jp)
